


And the Band Played On

by ishafel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-26
Updated: 2011-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:59:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is the least talented of the Winchesters, which is funny, because he's the only one who gets recognized on the street. Three days after Dad dies, he calls Rebecca and quits the band. AU in which the Winchesters are in a rock band.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the Band Played On

Sam is the least talented of the Winchesters, which is funny, because he's the only one who gets recognized on the street. Three days after Dad dies, he calls Rebecca and quits the band. They've been on a break for six months anyway, which is code for on the verge of breaking up. And it was only supposed to be a day job, for long enough to earn the money for college. That's something Dad and Dean never understood, because they live for it: for the music, yeah, but you can play music anywhere, you can play music by yourself: what they live for is playing together, being on stage, the lights and the fans and the swelling sound like the sea.

It's the last thing Sam ever wanted, to dance on a stage wearing a headset, while thousands of teenage girls screamed and waved their cell phones. But he grew up poor, he grew up righteous, he grew up in a thousand smoky bars and mildewed motel rooms, eating peanut butter sandwiches three times a day and wearing secondhand clothes. He knows the only place not selling out gets you is nowhere.

Being in a boy band saves his life, keeps him from starving, but he thinks it probably broke his father's heart. He knows what Dad said about the New Kids On the Block. When he told Dad he was leaving to join Passion, Dad told him not to bother coming back. He wasn't like Dean then and he isn't now; he doesn't love it enough. But with Dad dead.

With Dad dead his brother's going to need him. He catches the redeye and flies across the country. Dean and the rest of Exorcism are holed up in western New York, outside Buffalo. Sam doesn't call, because he knows Dean will tell him not to come, but Missouri's still there at the airport waiting for him. She knows things, Missouri, but Sam's never understood how.

She and Sam cram into Bobby's big rusty truck, and Bobby talks the whole way back without saying anything, probably mostly so Sam doesn't have to. There's dog hair on the seats, and what look like eagle feathers hanging from the rearview mirror. Bobby hasn't changed since Sam left: he hasn't changed as long as Sam's known him, and he's still the best bass player Sam's ever heard.

They pull up outside the motel, and Sam recognizes the cars in the lot. Dad's pickup, Elkins' battered Jeep, both looking abandoned already, and the Impala, black and gleaming as a hearse. The only one missing is Pastor Jim's, the old van Dean called the Godmobile when they were growing up. Sam wonders if they took the drum set out of the back before they took it away to the wrecking yard. He's sorry about Caleb, of course; he hasn't even really started to miss Dad. But he loved Jim, too, all the years he was growing up, when Jim bought him books and fought with Dad to make sure he had the chance to stay in school, said over and over again that whatever Sam was meant for it wasn't music.

He has tears in his eyes as he bangs on Dean's door, but Dean's smiling when he opens it. He's talked to Sam maybe a dozen times in four years, he should hate Sam, but he doesn't. When Jesse died he showed up at Sam's door, put the funeral together, dealt with Jesse's parents, sat in the pew next to Sam while the congregation sang hymns neither of them knew.

"Sammy," Dean says now, like Sam's twelve years old, still, like Dad and Jim and Caleb are out buying beer and weed and they'll be back any minute. "Come in, man."

The motel room looks like a thousand other motel rooms they stayed in as kids: ugly wallpaper, ugly bedspreads, stained carpet, crappy prints of bad paintings on the walls. There's a beautiful blond woman on one of the beds, and that's usual, too, for Dean. But she's old, maybe forty or forty-five; the fluorescent light mercilessly emphasizes the fine lines around her eyes and mouth. Sam recognizes her, although he's never met her—she's Ellen Harvelle, and he grew up listening to her music. She has a great voice, hoarse and smoky and hot. His dad had all her records once. They sold them in Albuquerque to pay for a new transmission for the Impala.

"Ellen's going to play a couple of gigs with us," Dean says, like it's nothing. As far as Sam knows, Ellen Harvelle hasn't played with anyone since her husband died. Sam thought she was dead. And then it registers.

"You're going to play gigs?" he demands. "Without Dad? Without Caleb and Pastor Jim?"

"It's what Dad would have wanted," Dean says. Sam can't deny this.

Ellen wanders over and offers him her hand. "Sam Winchester," she says, and gives him that heartbreaking smile he remembers from her album covers. "I'm sorry about your father. John was one of the good guys."

"I didn't know you two knew each other," Sam says stiffly. There's a lot he didn't know about Dad, of course: he never knew how Dad's mind worked.

"This business," Ellen shrugs vaguely. "Everyone knows everyone else."

Dean's watching the line of her breasts through her thin cotton shirt with the attention of a starving man at a banquet, but he looks up at this. "Sam," he says. It's a warning, loud and clear. Sit down, keep his mouth shut, let the grownups talk. Sam still hates it.

"What about drums?" he says instead. "Who's going to replace Jim?"

"Not replace," Ellen says very gently. "But I brought a kid who might work, actually, Dean. Ash. Plenty of attitude, but plenty of talent, too."

"We should jam, then," Dean says. His smile is a little too wide, doesn't quite reach his eyes. It's the first sign Sam's seen that he realizes something's wrong. He hasn't dealt with Dad's death, maybe hasn't even registered it. But before Sam can say anything, Dean's out the door and digging in the trunk of the Impala. He pulls out Dad's old acoustic guitar, still in its hard case, covered with familiar stickers.

Sam takes it, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. Some long haired kid is lugging a drum set out of the back of a dented pickup. Bobby's shutting his dog in his motel room. Dean grabs his own guitar off his bed—at least that means he hasn't slept with Ellen yet. He stops just outside the door and starts to play, no warm up, no tuning, just messing around with it while the others set up.

Sam recognizes it from the intro: "Mama Said," by Metallica; another hit single from the soundtrack of his childhood. He has dad's guitar out already, and his fingers find the strings of their own accord. This is memory, nothing more: he fumbles, catches himself, and Dean slows down just enough and Sam steadies and comes on.

Dean starts to sing. His voice isn't as powerful as Dad's was, but it's pitch-perfect and he has something Dad never had, that makes people look and never look away. And then, on the second line, Ellen comes in, and Bobby's base starts up.

Mama, she has taught me well  
Told me when I was young  
Son, your life's an open book  
Don't close it before it's done  
The brightest flame burns quickest  
That's what I heard her say  
A son's heart's owed to mother  
But I must find my way

And the long-haired guy finds the beat, binds them all together. It's been a long time for Sam—four years since he held a guitar, even, since he played with a band. Since he played with anyone as talented as Exorcism. He knows why they weren't ever famous: because Dad wouldn't or couldn't do the marketing, didn't believe in selling. Was happy enough just to play in shitty bars and on second rate tours.

Dean takes them from Metallica to "Requiem," which is as close as Exorcism ever came to a hit: the song Dad wrote for Mary, for their mother who had died when Sam was six months old. It's a sad song, a slow song, with the base line low and the drums subdued. If Sam were singing, if this were Passion covering it, he'd be tempted to dress it up, to add flourishes and breathy high notes. Dean sings it casually, absolutely straight, and it's heartbreaking. Sam feels goosebumps rising on his arms.

For a moment he forgets that he never knew Mom, that Dad had never forgiven him for her death, never forgiven him for leaving. This song makes him think of Jess, and for the first time he feels like he and Dad had something in common, something that bound them as tightly as music bound Dad and Dean.

Dean goes from there to Zeppelin, of course: Zeppelin is where he always ends up. Sam loves him for it, for the way he's always and intangibly Dean, dead fathers and resurrected folk singers apart. Sam doesn't know this one as well as some of them, and he's faking it a little when his phone goes off in his pocket. He's glad of the excuse to put the guitar down; his head feels swollen and his throat is tight with unshed tears.

It's Rebecca on the phone, and he owes her an explanation. She discovered him when he was nothing more than John Winchester's runaway son, she put Passion together, stood by him when Jesse died and Sam fell apart. She isn't going to be satisfied with an apology.

"Sam," she says now, "don't do this. You can't put your life on hold for your brother. You have a career--."

"Rebecca," he says back. "Rebecca--," Dean's playing something now Sam's never heard, something he guesses must be new. New, original Exorcism: it sounds like John Winchester, circa 1975, but it isn't just updated. It's better. Better than "Requiem," better than "American Patriot" and "Hanoi Burning." It's like getting behind the wheel of a vintage car and discovering there's a whole new engine under the the hood, twice as many horses as you thought there were.

"Rebecca, I've got a new band," he says, "and I want you to manage it." He holds the phone up in the air like a teenage girl in the front row at a Passion concert, and Dean starts the first verse. Ellen doesn't know the words but she sings the chorus; Bobby's as strong on base as he's ever been, and the Ash kid improvises a drum solo that feels like part of the song.

"What the fuck, Sam," Rebecca demands when he puts the phone back to his ear. "That isn't exactly a boy band, is it?"

"No," Sam says, deflating. "But they're good. Really, really good. This is going to be big, Rebecca."

Rebecca snorts into the phone. "I must be insane," she says. "You must be insane. There's no market for bands like this, Sam, you know that."

"Chicks dig my brother," Sam says, and instantly regrets it. Chicks is a Dean word, one he hasn't used since he left for California. Sam's the Winchester who respects women. Dean's the Winchester who screws them.

Rebecca laughs, though, instead of getting offended. "Well, if chicks dig him. Get the whole dog and pony show out here by Monday, Sam. I still have a recording studio booked. We'll see."

"Thank you," Sam says gratefully. "Thank you." Dean's stopped playing, and he's yelling for Sammy to get his ass in gear. The sun's setting, huge and red gold on the edge of the parking lot. Sam puts his phone in his pocket and reaches for his guitar.


End file.
